This 'n that

Monday

Jan 17, 2011 at 7:52 AMJan 17, 2011 at 7:54 AM

Steve Williams

Saturday, Paul Ingrassia, long-time expert and critic on the doings of the automobile industry — particularly as it exists in Detroit — authored a piece in the Wall Street Journal extolling the turnaround Detroit is experiencing ("The Great Auto Restructuring Shows Signs of Success"). GM and Ford are on track to turn profits this year, both in the billions, and even the weak sister, Chrysler, is breaking even.

Then he tells why. The infamous Jobs Bank (idled workers stayed home and collected full pay anyway) is gone, and with it lots of semiidle factories that should have been shuttered years earlier. And the car companies' unlimited health-care obligations to retired workers have been replaced by a trust, funded by company contributions that are capped at a fixed amount. Active workers now pay about 5 percent of their health-care costs, up from nothing a few years ago. But as Ingrassia also notes, 5 percent "is only about one-fifth of what the average American employee contributes out of wages to his own health-care plan. That's one sign Detroit's turnaround remains fragile."

The union threat

Something else is threatening the turnaround. That would be the United Auto Workers union, which controls Detroit manufacturers. Wednesday Bob King, president of the UAW, announced his union would be aggressively moving forward on organizing workers at Honda, BMW, Toyota and Hyundai, among others. He described what he would do to those firms that did not allow the UAW to hold a secret ballot election at their factories.

Threatening the auto manufacturers, King said that companies that don't sign on in support of the UAW's preferences for holding elections in regards to whether or not employees should be represented by the UAW, he announced that the UAW would brand those companies as human rights violators.

Why is the UAW having trouble organizing the employees of these non-union firms? Because the employees are making the same amount of money as those that work at companies with the UAW's presence. More, actually, when one considers those employees don't pay expensive union dues.

The unionization, bizarre work rules, heavy union dues, wildly underfunded pensions and the like are what brought GM and Chrysler to their knees, and almost did the same to Ford. The "restructuring" cost thousands and thousands of jobs, and has left Detroit an economic wasteland. Now the UAW wants to do the same to Toyota, Honda, BMW and the like. Some people just never learn.

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One of the most heavily unionized states is — no surprise — California. California's unions control the Democrat party, and the Democrat party controls Sacramento, and Sacramento has been overregulating, overtaxing and overcontrolling California's economy for about as long as the Democrats have been in power.

So California is pretty much beyond broke, and although Jerry Brown is making noises about "fixing" our finances, he doesn't really have much chance without union cooperation and higher taxes. We're here to guarantee that he'll get lip service and not much else from the unions, and a rejection slip from voters when they go to the polls on the issue in June.

Desperate for funds

So state government is desperate for money. And one way they plan on getting it is via higher traffic violation fines.

We can't provide solid evidence that it's true, but we've been told by CHP acquaintances that they're under pressure to issue a lot more tickets than last year, which had at least a 30 percent increase in fines over 2009. Effective now, if you do not stop at a red light, be ready to pay $436 in fines; if you pass a school bus with flashing red signals, you will be charged $616. Parking rules are also going to be more heavily enforced, so keep in mind that the next time you're ticketed for parking in a handicapped zone, you will be looking at almost $1,000 in fines.

As we said, California is beyond broke, and if Brown doesn't get his way with voter approval for higher taxes, he's apparently going to get his way via driver taxation. Watch yours.